History of Delhi

The earliest reference to a settlement in the Delhi area is found in the Mahabharata, an epic narrative about two groups of warring cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, both descendants of the prince Bharata. According to the narrative, a city called Indraprastha (“City of the God Indra”), built about 1400 bce, was the capital of the Pandavas. Although nothing remains of Indraprastha, legend holds it to have been a thriving city. The first reference to the place-name Delhi seems to have been made in the 1st century bce, when Raja Dhilu built a city near the site of the future Quṭb Mīnār tower (in present-day southwestern Delhi) and named it for himself.

The next notable city to emerge in the area now known as the Delhi Triangle was Anangpur (Anandpur), established as a royal resort in about 1020 ce by Anangapala of the Tomara dynasty. Anangapala later moved Anangpur some 6 miles (10 km) westward to a walled citadel called Lal Kot. The Tomara kings occupied Lal Kot for about a century. In 1164 Prithviraj III (Rai Pithora) extended the citadel by building massive ramparts around it; the city then became known as Qila Rai Pithora. In the late 12th century Prithviraj III was defeated, and the city passed into Muslim hands. Quṭb al-Dīn Aybak, builder of the famous tower Quṭb Mīnār (completed in the early 13th century), made Lal Kot the seat of his empire.

The Khaljī dynasty came to power in the Delhi area in the last decade of the 13th century. During the reign of the Khaljīs, the suburbs were ravaged by Mongol plunderers. As a defense against subsequent attacks by the Mongols, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī (reigned 1296–1316) built a new circular fortified city at Siri, a short distance northeast of the Quṭb Mīnār, that was designated as the Khaljī capital. Siri was the first completely new city to be built by the Muslim conquerors in India.

The region passed into the hands of the Tughluq dynasty in 1321. A new capital was built by Ghiyāth al-Dīn Tughluq (1320–25) at Tughlakabad, but it had to be abandoned in favour of the old site near the Quṭb Mīnār because of a scarcity of water. Ghiyāth’s successor, Muḥammad ibn Tughluq, extended the city farther northeast and built new fortifications around it. He then suddenly moved the capital to Deogiri (which he renamed Daulatabad), in the Deccan plateau to the south, in order to supervise territories that he had recently annexed there. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq’s successor, Fīrūz Shah Tughluq, abandoned the Daulatabad site and in 1354 moved his capital farther north, near the ancient site of Indraprastha. The capital he founded, Firuzabad, was situated in what is now the Firoz Shah Kotla area of contemporary Delhi.

After the invasion and sack of the Delhi area by Timur (Tamerlane) at the end of the 14th century, the Sayyid (c. 1414–51) and the Lodī (1451–1526) dynasties, which followed the Tughluqs, confined themselves within the precincts of Firuzabad. Bābur, the first Mughal ruler, arrived in 1526 and made his base at Agra to the southeast (in what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh). His son Humāyūn ascended the throne in 1530 and in 1533 founded a new city, Din Panah, on the bank of the Yamuna River. Shēr Shah, who overthrew Humāyūn in 1540, razed Din Panah to the ground and built his new capital, the Sher Shahi, now known as Purana Qila fort, in southeastern Delhi.

The next two Mughal emperors, Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) and Jahāngīr (reigned 1605–27), preferred to rule India from Agra. In 1639, however, Shah Jahān, Akbar’s grandson, instructed his engineers, architects, and astrologers to choose a location with a mild climate somewhere between Agra and Lahore (now in Pakistan). The choice was on the western bank of the Yamuna, just north of Purana Qila. Shah Jahān started the construction of the new capital, focusing on his fort, Urdu-i-Mualla, today called Lal Qila, or the Red Fort. The structure was completed in eight years, and on April 19, 1648, Shah Jahān entered his fort and his new capital, Shajahanabad, from its riverfront gate. Shahjahanabad today is Old Delhi. The greater part of Old Delhi is still confined within the space of Shah Jahān’s walls, and several gates built during his rule—the Kashmiri Gate, the Delhi Gate, the Turkman Gate, and the Ajmeri Gate—still stand.

With the fall of the Mughal Empire during the mid-18th century, Delhi faced raids by the Marathas (a people of peninsular India), invasion by Nādir Shah of Persia, and a brief spell of Maratha rule before the British arrived in 1803. Under British rule the city flourished—except during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, when the mutineers seized the city for several months, after which British power was restored and Mughal rule ended. In 1911 the British determined to shift the capital of India from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Delhi, and a three-member committee was formed to plan the construction of the new administrative center. The key architect on the committee was Sir Edwin Lutyens; it was he who gave shape to the city. The British moved to the partially built New Delhi in 1912, and construction was completed in 1931.

Since India’s independence in 1947, Delhi has become a major metropolitan area; it has spread north and south along the Yamuna River, spilled onto the river’s east bank, stretched over the Delhi Ridge to the west, and extended beyond the boundaries of the national capital territory into adjacent states. Initially, the city’s growth was attributable to the enormous influx of Hindu refugees from Pakistan following its partition from India (also in 1947). Since the early 1950s, however, Delhi has absorbed immigrants from throughout India at an astounding rate. New Delhi, once adjacent to Delhi, is now part of the larger city, as are the seats (or their remains) of the former empires. Between ancient mausoleums and forts have sprouted high-rise towers, commercial complexes, and other features of the contemporary city.

This rapid development has not been without cost. In a pattern familiar to many postcolonial megalopolises, the deluge of job-seeking immigrants has placed a colossal strain on the city’s infrastructure and on the ingenuity of city planners to provide sufficient electricity, sanitation, and clean water for the population. Especially problematic—in a city in which the population more than doubled in the final two decades of the 20th century—has been the large number of residents who have continued to live in substandard makeshift urban dwellings called jhuggi-jhopri. Lacking the most basic services, such housing has ultimately burdened city planners and administrators with the difficult task of integrating a tremendous population of jhuggi-jhopri residents into a city whose infrastructure barely accommodates already-existing households.

Also since the mid-20th century, traffic congestion in Delhi has become a serious impediment to mobility and, ultimately, to the city’s development. This situation has contributed greatly to Delhi’s already hazardous level of air pollution. The government has undertaken a number of antipollution measures since the 1980s, but, because of poor enforcement, those measures have failed to prevent the concentration of pollutants from soaring.